Isaiah 64:1-9
Saint Mark 13:24-37
When I was growing up on those occasions in which I had made a mess of things and it looked like my life was about to fall apart my Uncle Herb would take his little charge, and sometimes his big charge, aside and remind me: “It’s not the end of the world. You can’t even see it from here.”
Those were reassuring words to a youngster and then an adolescent trying to make his way in the world, attempting to figure out life, and relationships, and who I was, while at the same time looking like I had everything all together.
Now in adulthood, and some might say old age, very old, sometimes I have to keep telling myself when something has gone radically wrong that “It’s not the end of the world. You can’t even see it from here.”
On this first Sunday of Advent when we want to turn our attention to decorating and shopping, concert going and travel planning, cookie baking and party preparations, the lectionary god’s send us readings that slap us upside of the head with their almost concussive quality.
“With apocalyptic poetry – because prose cannot capture the mystery and power – Jesus spoke of falling stars and a darkened sun, of angels gathering God’s people, and the wide expanse of God’s grasp from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven."1
That is what his listeners needed to hear and it what may be what we need to hear too before we rush headlong into the birth of a baby business.
Biblical scholars tell us that Jesus’ dire prediction takes place outside of the temple which for the disciples was a sign of stability. He and his disciples were looking at the beautiful building, in much the same way we look at St. Luke, and thought it would be there forever. For them, the temple, like St. Luke is for us, was a sign of normalcy, stability, consistency. But Jesus throws a wet blanket over the moment of architectural appreciation when he says: “You see these great buildings? Not a single stone will be left standing on another; every one will be thrown down!”2
They could hardly believe what Jesus was saying. “No, no, Jesus,” you can hear them saying, “You may have been right about a lot of things but you can’t be right about this. The temple will always be there, right?” “No, no, Jesus,” you can almost hear us saying, “You may have been right about a lot of things but you can’t be right about this. St. Luke will always be there. Right Jesus?” And Jesus says, “Well, maybe.”
His original hearers knew he was right because some forty years after Jesus spoke and shortly after Mark penned his gospel, in 70 A.D. the Romans came to town and totally demolished the temple that his disciples so admired. “Whatever the strange ... language ... it must be understood as a direct address and in relation to the reality of the Temple’s destruction.”
Things don’t last forever. We wish they would but sometimes they don’t. And when they don’t it feels like it’s the end of the world. This may cause us to cry out in fear “Lord, tear open the heavens and come down.
There are moments in every life, yours, mine, everybody’s, where we have messed up so badly that it looks like it’s the end of the world.
We may have made a decision that, at first looked, so enticing, so wonderful, looking like everything we had ever dreamed of, and discovered the truth of the old saying, “all that glitters is not gold” Remember then, “it isn’t the end of the world, your world, you can’t even see it from where you are.”
We may have made one bad financial decision after another to the point where we are not only down to your last dime but past it. We know that it is financial worries that wake people up at night and keep them tossing-and-turning for a very long time. Somewhere around 3 o’clock in the morning no matter how dark things seem, literally and figuratively, it is well to remind ourselves that “it’s not the end of the world. You can’t even see it from here.”
We may have discovered that a relationship of many years has become irretrievably broken. We may have lost to death someone we loved or loved dearly. Or we may be discovering that our body which has behaved fairly well up until now is beginning to fall apart little by little, one day at a time. All these events might be a good time to remind ourselves, “lt’s not the end of the world, you can’t even see it from here.”
Even so, at moments like these, and countless others, we may be tempted to cry out: Lord, this looks like the end of the world, my world. “Oh, that You would rend the heavens! That You would come down!"3
In the theatre there is a term for such a longing. It is called the deus ex machina and is still used in literary criticism for those cases where an author uses some improbable (and often clumsy) plot device to work his or her way out of a difficult situation. The poor family suddenly inherits a large fortune. The cavalry comes charging over the hill like in the opera, “The Daughter of the Regiment” where they roll in just at the nick of time, complete with an onstage cannon. It is the stuff of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas when before you know it a sister becomes someone’s aunt, a long-lost relative appears with a major announcement and, before you can say, “I am the very model of a modern major general” a bouncy tune is playing, and all is well with the world.
George Bernard Shaw disapproved of such contrived and artificial endings. He said that it was much more tragic (and therefore much more realistic) to leave characters to “wither in their bonds.”4
Advent and Christmas remind us that Jesus never leaves us to wither all he asks us to do is stay awake amid all the times and seasons for signs of his presence.
Dr. Fred B. Craddock tells us that those signs may come at unexpected times and unusual places. Dr. Craddock says:
Before Jesus the people used to tell stories about when the Messiah came and like we would begin our stories with “once upon a time” theirs’s would begin with the words, “when the messiah comes.”
To the beggar sitting on the side of the road they might pat the poor fellow on the back and say, “When the Messiah comes there will be no more poverty.”
To the battered individual, broken and bruised, they might say, “When the Messiah comes, no more violence.”
To the marginalized and outcast they might say, “When the Messiah comes, you’ll be included.”
To the ones who faced an empty chair at their holiday table because of either estrangement, sickness, or worse yet the loss of someone they loved, “When the Messiah comes, no more misery.”
Then, I remember Dr. Craddock saying, the Messiah came and there still was violence, and poverty, and exclusion, and misery.
It was then, he pointed out, that the disciples had to do what he called, “a magnificent flip-flop” where they realized that wherever there was misery of any kind, any kind of misery at all, there was the Messiah.
The message of Advent and Christmas is that Jesus is with us. In everything that we might face.
Driving home one afternoon last week out of the corner of my eye I noticed a sign on a church that I had driven by countless times. It looked to me like another faltering protestant church had been bought out and the new sign trumpeted that the new name was Winner’s Chapel Chicago.
I wonder if anybody at the Winner’s Chapel ever were free to admit that there were time when they begged God to open the heavens and come down. I wonder if their sun never darkened, or their stars ever fell from the sky. I wondered if every Sunday wasn’t Christmas and if every year, they all got the perfect presents.
I can’t promise you that kind of life this morning but what I can promise you is that wherever you are Jesus will be with you and so nothing you endure will be the end of the world. In fact, with him at your side you won’t even be able to see it from there.
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1. Shannon Kershner, “Honest Hope.” Sermon preached at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago, November 30, 2014
2. St. Mark 13:2. (PHILLIPS) (PHILLIPS=J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English (New York: Simon Schuster, 1995).
3. Isaiah 64:1. (NKJV) [NKJV=The New King James Version]
4. James Sommerville, “Too Big A Mess." A Sermon for Every Sunday, Advent 1b Isaiah 64:1-9: Mark ...,” A Sermon for Every Sunday, November 28, 2023, https://asermonforeverysunday.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Jim-Somerville-Advent-1B-Isaiah-64.pdf.
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